Tag Archives: New Jersey

Morning of any given Tuesday. Apparently there’s nothing outstanding related to this day, leaving some personal memories aside. Oh well, yes! I had an appointment scheduled for fixing my motorbike after one year and a half parked and forgotten. Yep, no comments.

My morning coffee has been sweetened thanks to the announcement of the availability of Handwritten, the fourth album by the guys from New Brunswick, in streaming, via NPR Music. Needless to say, my world has immediately taken a break for playing the album entirely for the first time.

I said to myself to avoid bad quality leaks belonging to bands I love. It’s a hard commitment, but sometimes I manage to accomplish it. This time this wasn’t a leak but an official premiere of the album, thus I had to give it a try.

As you can imagine it was impossible listening to it just once, and well, let’s say I haven’t played anything else today, but The ’59 Sound when pushing my poor motorbike towards the garage. TGA have made my day.

I posted the first single, 45, when it was launched. After listening endlessly, I still think it’s definitely to become one of their greatest anthems, very complete, very TGA, catchy intro, super rhythmic and intense melodies.

I’ve listened to Handwritten 5-6 times today, and once I finish writing this, I’ll forget about the album till I receive my Deluxe copy, whose ETA is due to August the earliest, depending on shipping.

After digesting 45, I couldn’t conceal my excitement and the expectations were too great. To be honest, this uneasy feeling of considering failure as a possibility never brought out. From the very beginning, since I saw those captures at the studio, with the vintage Telecasters, the classic amps, the band attitude… I had good vibes regarding this new album. And seems that I wasn’t wrong.

Guess when you listen to a new album, your attention is unconsciously focused on the first songs, and then you get kinda relaxed. First half of Handwritten is simply brilliant. Today I can tell I’m already charmed by Handwritten, MulhollandDrive, Too Much Blood or Desire. I might change my opinion in two weeks, who knows? It’s not big deal anyway. First impressions imply excitement, happiness and certain degree of euphoria, as to distort the senses a bit, truth is that I’ve enjoyed the experience and the album has cheered me up quite much.

The Gaslight Anthem is not a band of virtuous musicians, they’re actually quite limited, and on live performances this is quite noticeable, however, quality in their compositions, the formula, their style clearly influenced by many artists I’ve already mentioned and they also admit to be inspiring, the story telling of the songs, their hardworking philosophy, and the positive energy and intensity they spread, all these features are what make the guys from New Jersey grand.

I think they’ve made it again, delivering a great album which has nothing to envy to their previous work. They found the path and easily keep the track, because they’ve already found themselves, and are aware, we, the fans, have finally found them.

Brian Fallon, Alex Rosamilia, Alex Levine and Benny Horovitz perhaps are not yet aware of having trespassed the boundaries into the level of the classic bands and he legends, and I know it’s 3.30AM and you think I’m talking nonsense and should go to sleep immediately, but I know what I mean. The Gaslight Anthem is one of the few bands which will survive the hype and if they stay tight and don’t fuck it up, they’ll be active in 15 years from now. You know the expiring products seem to dominate the world nowadays, well, these guys joined for long consumption .

Once this said, now it’s just a matter of time, on one hand to have the physical album in my hands, and on the other, wait till their next visit in November. The wait is gonna be hard.